I'd just like to say one thing to you people saying that grinding is a result of things like a leveling system, or because the fun parts of the game require leveling up and so on.
GO AND MAKE A REAL MORPG WITH REAL CONTENT, and a reasonable amount of content at that. I am not talking a few quests, and maybe 1-2 dungeons.
I am talking 100s of quests and at minimum 10 dungeons.
I doubt any of you have actually done it, because you'd realise why grinding exists if you did.
Lets put it this way. In the game I am working on, I added maybe 5 dungeons with a total of... 20 or so quests. An average player would play through all that in no more than 6 hours, but on average between 4-5.
How long did it take me to make these dungeons? 50-60 hours, excluding all the core systems behind them. That is roughly around 8-10% of the time I spend on the game is turned into time someone will play it.
Oh yeah, over the months I have probably spent THOUSANDS of hours working on this game, and resulted in 5 hours worth of play time...? WHAAAAT?
Admittedly, with the systems in place adding play time to the game is much quicker. But for every 10 hours I work on the game it translates into about 1 hour for play time. And 10 hours of work for me is anywhere between 2-4 days of actual time.
In short, it is impossible for anyone to produce content at the same speed as people will play it. As such, grinding (in any form, even randomly generated, repeatable quests for example) is just there to give players at least something to do while they wait for new stuff from the developer.
Imagine this, you're playing a game and manage to do everything currently in it. Then suddenly you get a message "Sorry, we don't have grinding in this game! And since you've done everything your access to the game has been revoked until we add new content to the game.
Come back in a few months! We'll have a few more hours of stuff for you to do!".
I'd sooner simply have grinding to do than a system like that implamented!
Also, the above ONLY applies to games with actual content. Games with nothing to do but grinding do not apply.
The trick is not to implement 'content'. The trick is to implement gameplay mechanics that give rise to emergent gameplay. See, for example, Dwarf Fortress, which I keep referring to as a gold standard. If your mechanics are interesting enough, people will keep playing your game, and won't keep repeating themselves over and over again.
Admittedly, there will always be grindy sections - starting a fort in DF always goes pretty much the same way, although it requires some thought. But it's far less than the run-monsters-for-items style grinding. | |
True enough in some cases. Dwarf Fortress is an example of this. But try and translate this into a RPG.
In a game like a online RPG, which most people would associate with grinding you absolutely need content, otherwise you do just end up with a boring grindfest. Compared to an action game like Proelium or pretty much any multiplayer FPS, these games do not need nearly as much content, because the objective is people fighting each other, and provided they have an area to do that and a method of doing it there is nothing else needed. | |
Michael3131 wrote:
has anyone come up with an effective way to remove grinding from a game? One that doesn't reward people for killing thousands of enemies Yeah, don't reward people for killing thousands of enemies. The real world doesn't reward you for killing thousands of rabbits other than having many freezer-fulls of rabbit meat and probably a lot of dirty looks from anyone that you tell about it. Maybe even a fine in some places. Reward people for accomplishments, not for killing stuff. | |
Foomer wrote:
The real world doesn't reward you for killing thousands of rabbits other than having many freezer-fulls of rabbit meat And muscle growth, an increase in agility, and general hunting skills, etc? ;P Reward people for accomplishments, not for killing stuff. Define 'accomplishment'. How is finding a quest giver a bowl or flower and bringing it back to him more of an accomplishment than killing thousands of rabbits? >_> | |
Kaioken wrote:
Foomer wrote: Muscle growth and agility come from romping around in the woods all the time, not killing stuff. General hunting skills perhaps, but how does one benefit from killing rabbits only to enhance their ability to kill rabbits? I'm talking about practical rewards, not real-world "stat boosts". Define 'accomplishment'. How is finding a quest giver a bowl or flower and bringing it back to him more of an accomplishment than killing thousands of rabbits? >_> Because searching around and finding things doesn't involve grinding. My Life As A Spy had a decent accomplishment system. You were given a mission folder and told to go and find the required items to complete the mission. Once you've acquired them all, you put them in the folder and return it to the mission-giver for training points and/or monetary reward. What makes this interesting is what is required to obtain each of those items - some of them may require sneaking into enemy territory and swiping items from their base, or tracking down informers in order to acquire items from them. | |
Foomer wrote:
General hunting skills perhaps, but how does one benefit from killing rabbits only to enhance their ability to kill rabbits? I'm talking about practical rewards, not real-world "stat boosts". Practical reward: food. | |
CaptFalcon33035 wrote:
Foomer wrote: Killing a thousand rabbits for food is not practical. One or two, maybe. No one in the real world ever spends the day killing a truck load of rabbits for food. | |
Popisfizzy wrote:
Perhaps he is operating a popular restaurant. Perhaps they're just more inclined to argue instead of trying to see my point. | |
Ok. Let's use HrH as an example:
How much time have you spent grinding the beach for crystals or forging for food, or metalworking or any craft skills? Eventually, no matter how many quests you give, your players will accomplish them all. Side tasks that allow more play time become your grind. It's not about killing, it's about repetition. | |
It has been said already but emergent gameplay will dominate eventually, hopefully replacing most or all of the grind in a game. I would like to actually see an MMO use emergent gameplay.
George Gough | |
Even so, there's a finite number of significantly unique situations. Your system will still have a limited amount of content, even if it's dynamic and emergent. You'll still have to add content if you want to give players new game situations, though this model does give you a better development time versus game time than any other, and may be enough to make grind fairly obsolete, though no system can really eliminate it altogether.
Not George Gough | |
Foomer wrote:
Killing a thousand rabbits for food is not practical. One or two, maybe. No one in the real world ever spends the day killing a truck load of rabbits for food. I'm just sayin'. Killing rabbits (in any number) is practical for food. People will generally have enough sense not to massacre rabbits for one meal. But this is a game. Maybe a rabbit provides little food for his gargantuan hero, he requires the sustainance of one-thousand rabbits and twenty men to be satisfied. | |
Xooxer wrote:
Even so, there's a finite number of significantly unique situations. Your system will still have a limited amount of content, even if it's dynamic and emergent. You'll still have to add content if you want to give players new game situations, though this model does give you a better development time versus game time than any other, and may be enough to make grind fairly obsolete, though no system can really eliminate it altogether. Exactly what I said, just more detailed and better said all around. Not George Gough .> | |
Xooxer wrote:
Even so, there's a finite number of significantly unique situations. Your system will still have a limited amount of content, even if it's dynamic and emergent. You'll still have to add content if you want to give players new game situations, though this model does give you a better development time versus game time than any other, and may be enough to make grind fairly obsolete, though no system can really eliminate it altogether. How about an alternative answer to the first question then? has anyone come up with an effective way to remove grinding from a game? Yeah, don't make an RPG. | |
The grind has nothing to do with the length of the treadmill, it simply manifests because the players are bored and trying to reach where the fun is.
To an extent, if you put any treadmill in the game, some players are bound to experience the grind because some are going to be bored quicker than others.
To fix the grind, you make sure the players are able to move on when they are bored instead of being forced to perform activities they no longer have an interest in.
The specific mechanics of this are up to you. Personally, I would work on a really interesting core gameplay which does not become monotonous so easily.
Sooner or later, players are going to get bored. If they're not paying you a monthly subscription, why not let them move on? Better that than to come away hating games in general because of extreme burnout.